Try unity for a change
For once, the Republican governor and the Democrat-controlled Legislature ought to be on the same side of an issue in Massachusetts.
None of them wants Lawrence J. Robertson, Edward Salie, or chronically impaired drivers like them behind the wheel of a car. It is time to put aside politics and take away their keys.
There are rumblings on Beacon Hill that some Democrats would rather obstruct progress on major social and economic issues than hand Romney any legislative victory that might advance his presidential prospects. How will they explain that to the baby girl struggling for life after she was injured in a crash at a Quincy intersection, or to the Winthrop woman hospitalized after she was run down at a Lynn sausage stand?
Robertson is accused of being high on drugs when he slammed the borrowed pickup he was driving into the car driven by Katelyn Melia, a 24-year-old woman who was nine months pregnant. Her daughter, delivered by emergency caesarean section, remains hospitalized. Robertson, with a long record of driving drunk or stoned, lost his legal right to drive in Massachusetts 20 years ago. Incredibly, the woman who loaned him the pickup faces no criminal charges under state law.
Salie's arrest last week was his third on drunken driving charges. Officers said he reeked of alcohol after he allegedly lost control of his car and pinned Paula Monteleone, 66, against a wall. She remains in critical condition. He remains in jail, awaiting a dangerousness hearing, scheduled too late to be of much use to Monteleone.
Those two accidents, coming within a week of each other, have given fresh momentum to Melanie's bill, a proposal Romney filed last May to toughen the state's notoriously ineffectual drunken driving laws. The measure, named for a Marshfield teenager killed by a repeat drunk driver, is not without flaws, but it is a serious effort to target the chronic offenders responsible for so many motor vehicle fatalities.
Melanie's bill does not pit lawyer-legislators interested in shielding potential clients from prosecution against crusading survivors indifferent to the due process rights of the accused. There is a middle ground. Somewhere between stripping drivers of their legal rights and ignoring the carnage caused by drunks on the state's roadways there is legislation that both Governor Mitt Romney and the Massachusetts Legislature could support.
The strongest elements of the bill target repeat offenders, drivers who get back on the road even after their licenses have been suspended or revoked. The bill would mandate a three-month jail sentence for anyone convicted of operating under the influence after being caught driving without a license. Without the threat of incarceration, chronic offenders have little incentive to obey the law. The bill would also permanently revoke the license of any drunk driver who has killed someone on the road.
Other provisions of the bill are more problematic. You do not have to be a criminal defense lawyer to have reservations about a longer license suspension for drivers who refuse to take a breath-alcohol or field sobriety test. Advocates see the right of refusal as a loophole. Others rightly see it as a constitutional protection against self-incrimination. The law already suspends a driver's license for 180 days if he or she refuses to take the sobriety tests; Romney's bill would increase the penalty to one year.
The bill, now before the Legislature's joint Committee on the Judiciary, conspicuously fails to address the need for treatment and supervision of drivers with drug and alcohol addictions.
Representative Eugene O'Flaherty, cochairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said last week that he is not interested in rushing legislation into law, and that he prefers to listen to expert testimony in hearings next month before committing himself. There is a greater sense of urgency at the bedsides of Baby Girl Melia and Paula Monteleone.
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com. 